The Magic Hour
by A.Diamond
Summary: Golden light filtered through the windows when Dean got home to the apartment, soft and enchanting with the promise of a sunset just beyond the far horizon. It warmed the normally stark white walls, turned the copious dust particles into dancing glitter, and illuminated a halo around Castiel as he knelt in the center of the floor, packing old books into a cardboard box.


Golden light filtered through the windows when Dean got home to the apartment, soft and enchanting with the promise of a sunset just beyond the far horizon. It warmed the normally stark white walls, turned the copious dust particles into dancing glitter, and illuminated a halo around Castiel as he knelt in the center of the floor, packing old books into a cardboard box.

Cas finished cradling the last tome with its brethren before he looked up, and if the backlit smile of greeting he offered was small and uncertain, Dean could hardly blame him. The last time they'd been close enough to breathe the same air, nearly a week prior, had been marked by raised voices and furious accusations and had ended with, "I can't do this anymore, I really can't. Just... go, Cas. Get the fuck out of my life."

They had exchanged a pair of texts since then, one each: "May I retrieve my belongings on Friday evening?" and "Fine."

Seeing him again, vulnerable and framed in the benevolent glow of the hour, the anger that had simmered in Dean's blood since their fight sublimated into a deep ache of loss. He wanted to reach out, to hold and reclaim and absolve, but this thing between them had broken. Had been broken. So he just said, "Hey, Cas," and wondered if it would be the last time. Either the words or the thought sent unpleasant vibrations rattling down his ribs and he had to clench his jaw tightly so they wouldn't shake loose vows of eternity that he could not allow himself to mean.

"Hello, Dean," Cas returned with equal solemnity. He would miss that voice; how it made a joke sound like a fact and a question sound like a ritual and his name sound like a prayer. "How are you?"

Dean hadn't meant to admit, "I miss you like crazy," but the strangled voice couldn't belong to anyone else. Still, he felt lighter for the admission; the feeling bubbled uncertainly in his chest as Cas's breath caught at the confession. It was just a moment, but that moment—Cas kneeling in the fading sunlight, lips barely parted and face upturned with the most wondrous look of rapture he had ever seen—shattered Dean's resolve and sent him crashing down to meet his lover.

"I love you," Cas offered of himself in return, his breath warm and moist against the side of Dean's neck. They clung together, desperate fingers bruising arms and sides, which was not new territory for them. Their chests moved together in a synchronous counterpoint of inhale-exhale, which was. "I love you," Cas repeated with every sigh, "I love you, I love you, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

Dean halted his stumbling apologies with a touch, dragging his thumb across Cas's lips in a gentle caress that he followed with his own lips a moment later. The kiss was soft, just a chaste exchange of pressure, and it felt so much like coming home that Dean had to hold back a sob. He had realized, over the past week, that he was unable to recall the feeling of an intimate touch from someone other than the man before him; in the years of their relationship, fraught though it had been at times, he had never wanted to.

When he found that he still didn't want to, it was enough cause for him to deepen the contact, pushing his tongue forward and moaning as Cas accepted it, sucked it, pressed back in kind. They entangled in this way for long minutes, relearning tastes and contours that neither had really forgotten. Slowly, impassioned reconnection soothed into languid familiarity and hands began to roam, sweeping over broad backs and petting through short, soft hair. Pressed together as they were, awareness of the growing tension between them would have been unavoidable even had Dean wished to avoid it, which he certainly did not. With a muffled groan, he rocked gently against Cas, pressing their matched erections together, then pulling back a scant few inches and nudging forward again until Cas stopped the slow rhythm with both hands on Dean's hips.

Gliding under the edge of Dean's waistband, Castiel brought his fingers to meet at the button atop the fly, which was quickly undone along with the zipper. Dean meant to return the favor, but Cas was already attending to himself, so he instead toed off his shoes and broke away just long enough to push his jeans and boxers off. Even that brief moment away was too much; Dean had to return for more deep, sweet kisses before he could allow himself to pull his shirt over his head, and allow Cas to shed his clothing as well.

They met again with caresses over newly exposed flesh. Dean traced over Cas's chest, arms, back, reveling in the habitual drag of fingertips on skin even as a part of his mind knew he was searching out changes: injuries he'd been unable to treat through his absence, marks of mistreatment or carelessness, signs that someone else had pressed themselves deeply enough into the nerves to leave an imprint.

Dean longed to have Cas fuck him again. The need to be claimed ached in his chest, a mix of physical and emotional desire for the gentle love-making of their slow, lazy weekend mornings. But he feared that to break away and retrieve a condom would shatter the fragile magic of the moment and bring them back to a reality he had no wish to face. At the same time, he dared not feel Cas bare inside him as he had so often before. Whatever folly this was, he would at least refuse to be so reckless.

That thought brought his mind to agonizing recollection of their parting and he snapped away from it insistently, focusing his efforts instead on trailing light fingertips up Cas's cock then skimming his nails back down. It wasn't meant as a tease; Cas seemed to share Dean's mood, sentimental bordering on melancholic, which would incline him to soft touches and gentle movements—worship, not desperation. A pleased noise that was half sigh, half moan confirmed Dean's reading of the situation and the last of his thin hesitation fell away.

Drawing back from Cas's mouth slowly, easing the loss with slow, easy kisses and licks across chasing lips as he separated, Dean nosed his way across Cas's jaw and down to press feathered kisses to the side of his throat. On a slow, meandering path, Cas brought one hand up from where it had rubbed at Dean's spine to cling to the back of Dean's neck, just at the hairline.

For the span of a dozen breaths huffed from Castiel's lips to Dean's ear, they held the pose, more or less: Cas's fingers brushing at Dean's nape and Dean's mouth painting endearments above Cas's pulse and stroking love into his blood-hot flesh. But Cas had never been a passive lover, nor a selfish one, so before long his other hand drifted to bestow equally tender affections to Dean's nipple. His fingers ghosted over sensitive skin, petting and tapping and oh-so-softly squeezing until Dean's mouth fell away in a drawn-out sigh and Cas ducked his head to claim it again.

Only then did he drop his hand from Dean's neck, grazing a quick detour over the other nipple on its way to cradle Dean's dick in a warm, dry palm. He slipped his thumb over the head in increasingly slick swirls, matching the tempo if not the movement of Dean's hand on him.

Even that slight play of skin and precome was enough to start a slow tingle burning at the base of Dean's spine and he leaned into the touch, pressed his face to the join of Cas's neck and shoulder, and murmured pleas against the warm skin as a detached part of him fought the desire to escalate the intensity of the encounter prematurely. He wanted so many things so deeply; he wanted all the intimacies he had ever shared with Castiel, he wanted this surreal moment never to end. He wanted to know, needed to know, if it was an end that felt like a beginning or a beginning that felt like an end.

Whether Cas could tell Dean had begun to think too much or he had just had his fill of the gentlest touches, he eased his hand closed around Dean's erection and stroked it in earnest as he urged, "Come on."

"Yes," Dean whispered back, and "Cas," and "I love you." He circled Cas's cock in his fist, pulling and squeezing but never too hard, for Cas would still be sensitive and his hand was lubricated only with their mixed sweat.

In very little time, with breaths growing shallow and muscles tight, Dean felt the heat pour out of him as he groaned a release that was more catharsis than explosion. Castiel followed, as he followed Dean to the ground in a barely controlled collapse.

And if the promises Dean meant to keep within found their way from his lungs in gasps, Cas at least allowed him to pretend that they were muffled into incomprehensibility when pressed into his lover's shoulder.

Then, lying on their backs on the bare wooden floor, the two men shared quiet until Dean glanced over and had to ask, "What happened to us?

"I work too much and you drink too much. You're scared of having emotions and I'm horrible at communicating my needs, and we're both so terrified of abandonment that we'd rather self-sabotage than risk having to watch the other party leave us."

"So the menage-a-Meg-and-Balthazar, that was self-sabotage? Because it looked pretty self-satisfying at the time." Dean knew his soft voice betrayed the harsh words, but it seemed only fitting for their circumstances.

"I invited my horniest and least scrupulous exes to the apartment I lived in with my boyfriend, got high, and let them fuck me just in time for you to come home. Which part of that, exactly, do you think had unforeseen consequences?"

"You wanted that fight? You were seriously trying to get me to throw you out? Why?"

"Because it seemed better for it to be my choice, a result of my actions, instead of waiting for you to end it over things I can't control. Things I can never give you."

"Things you can't—Cas, what the hell are you talking about?"

"'Leaving Lisa was the worst decision I ever made,'" Cas quoted. "'Ben's like my own kid, and she's not even letting him talk to me anymore. I thought we were okay, but it turns out she was just waiting for me to get over the whole gay thing and beg her to take me back. Maybe I should.'"

Castiel's voice stayed affectless as he parroted Dean's drunken ranting, but Dean recognized the sheen of tears reddening his eyes from the day his mother died, the tightness of his jaw from when he had stood and taken Luke's punches again and again and again while Mike held Dean back and made him watch what happened when he failed to pay his debts.

He wanted to protest. He wanted, more than he could remember wanting anything before in his life, to claim he hadn't meant those words. Both of them knew he had, though, and that it had been a momentary sincerity, fueled by alcohol and self-loathing, did little to assuage their destructive power.

There was nothing to be said in the face of their downfall, so they didn't speak again for a long time.

Sunset was washing the last colors from the sky when Dean stretched himself over Cas, and they kissed until dusk fully gave way to night. As Dean pulled back and saw Cas's eyes open slowly, flicking up to take in the sliver of a nearly new moon through the window, he knew it was time.

They dressed in heavy silence. Dean hoped that Cas's hesitance to look at him came from uncertainty, not shame, though if pressed he would have to admit to both curling in the pit of his own stomach. Once they were both presentable, clothed and smoothed, with no evidence of what had passed between them but flushed cheeks and soft memories, Dean stepped in front of Cas and lifted his hand to brush dark hair away from blue eyes.

"We could try again," he said softly, thumb stroking along Cas's cheekbone.

"Yes," Cas whispered back, turning his head to press a kiss to Dean's palm. "We could."


End file.
